


Dictionary Definition

by veryderpypizza



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Abby has Issues, Banter, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Lev learns slang, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, let me know if I should change the rating, no beta we die like men, watch me avoid naming this school like they avoided naming jurrasic park
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25410805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veryderpypizza/pseuds/veryderpypizza
Summary: After Lev offhandedly mentions his birthday while he and Abby are on their way to Santa Barbara Airport, Abby decides to do something nice for him. Something better and cooler than a shark plushie.They have to cut through a university to make it to the airport; she can work with that.
Relationships: Abby & Lev (The Last of Us)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 81





	Dictionary Definition

**Author's Note:**

> I was originally in the middle of writing a follow-up for my other fic, but then I couldn't get this idea out of my head until it was done. But now that it is, I can get back to my other works. Enjoy!

Abby has been dragging Lev through the school grounds for close to an hour and a half now, since leaving the sailboat. They have to cut through the campus to get to the Santa Barbara Airport anyway, but the plans changed the moment Lev randomly mentioned yesterday that his birthday would be today. 

One night of scouting the university alone and finding the perfect place to celebrate later, and now she’s on her way to show him his present. As fun as it would be to brag to him how she managed to punch a Clicker to death in near total darkness, that would give away the plan. Neither of them have acclimated to the heat of Southern California yet, so it’s only natural that at this point, Lev begins to struggle. 

“Where are we going?” he huffs, hands on his knees as he takes a moment to catch his breath

“It’s a surprise,” Abby teases, jogging in place to not lose her rhythm. “C’mon slowpoke, we’re almost there.” 

“Are you sure this is the way to the airport?” Lev looks up to her quizzically, a thin sheen of sweat already on his brow.

Abby rolls her eyes and decides she’s been dodging his questions long enough. The only reason she caves now is because she honestly ran out of excuses. “We’re not going to the airport yet,” she admits.

“What? Why not?”

“We’re cutting through the school first.”

“But why?”

_Always asking questions._

“‘Cuz I said so,” Abby asserts with enough deliberate playfulness in her voice that she hopes Lev will understand the joke. Like always, however, he only frowns and looks very disapproving as he stands back up, but he follows Abby anyway as she leads him through the abandoned university. “You’ll like this, I promise.” 

“Is this because of what I said yesterday?”

Abby can’t help grinning. “No comment.”

“Why can’t you tell me where we’re going?” Now he sounds genuinely irked. 

“I told you,” says Abby, looking ahead, the target building already in sight with its recognizable windows on the upper floors. It’s amazing that they’re still there. “It’s a surprise, and a good one too. Come on, we’re close.”

They say nothing for a little while as they gather themselves and continue onward. The entire time Lev stays right on Abby’s pace beside her, where she can see him, every so often looking over his shoulder. But he eventually stops doing that in favor of looking at the school around him, at its open spaces between buildings and sleek, modern designs. They stick out a little more than buildings usually do, and it’s from the lack of dense foliage in the area. Save for the patches of yellow tall grass, and a couple of tree overgrowths here and there, this place is mostly barren of plant life. It makes it stick out, in a way. Abby had told him the other day that not many things can grow in a desert. There aren’t many trees here, not like in Washington. It’s different. New. And far away.

He looks fascinated, and it has Abby secretly jumping for glee at what she has in store for him. This wasn’t even the best part yet. Surely the lack of Infected is playing a role, too. Allowing for these brief moments of respite. 

Lev looks at Abby, probably to ask another question, but then he pauses. He seems to be smiling slightly to himself, but the expression is quickly replaced with a little confused frown. 

“What?” he asks, like he’s implying that Abby is trying to inquire about something.

Abby then realizes that she had been smiling and staring a little, too busy tooting her own horn that she definitely got Lev one of the best birthday presents ever. She clears her throat before making herself shrug. “Nothin’,” she says nonchalantly. 

“Did you do something?” Lev asks. “You’re acting different.”

“No I’m not,” says Abby, crossing her arms. “ _You’re_ acting different.” _I know you are but what am I. Really, Abby, how old are you, 10?_ She snickers at the look of perplexion Lev gives her, then, feeling a little bad, decides to move the conversation. “Penny for your thoughts?” 

“What?” Lev asks, his brow set like it usually is, but then his face softens and his eyebrows raise in familiarity. “Oh!” he exclaims, as if recalling something. “You’re asking me what I’m thinking about."

“So you _do_ listen to me!” She nudges his shoulder with her elbow as they slow their half-jogs into walking. She taught him that phrase about three weeks ago and hasn’t used it since. Is this what being proud feels like?

“Why wouldn’t I?” Lev asks, confused again, wiping his brow with his forearm. 

“Oh, uh,” says Abby, feeling a light trickle of sweat roll down the back of her neck. The sun is already starting to get to her too. “I didn’t mean to doubt you, if that’s what you were— I was just messing around.” Something about the way she had so casually said it leaves a pang of familiarity in her heart. “It was a joke. Weird one.” _Something dad would always tell me._ “So,” she rolls her left shoulder just to give herself something to do, then stops herself from grinding her teeth. “Were you thinking about the school?”

“Oh, right. Yes,” says Lev, spinning around as he walks to get a full view of the surroundings. “We had schools back in Haven, but they were nothing like this.”

“Yeah, well, this is what they were like before the outbreak,” says Abby, taking in her surroundings. The main colors of the buildings are an off-white cream color, usually offset by an accent like a muted orange-red, or green, or blue. Some are made up of more glass than actual walls. “I lived in one of these, you know.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, way before Seattle. I was with the Fireflies. We had the whole school just like this one to ourselves. A whole QZ, actually. Trained there, slept in the dorms, everything. It was our headquarters.” Abby chuckles as a fond memory resurfaces. “My dad used to joke, saying that it wasn’t what he had in mind when he finally got me to college.” Her voice quivers at the end and grows quiet. She can see Lev nodding to himself in her peripheral vision. She looks up and sees a sign that she recognizes from yesterday night and perks up right away. “Hey, we’re almost there, it’s just up ahead.”

She takes off in a semi-fast jog, and Lev chases after her and catches up in no time. Soon enough they’re in front of the large, eight-story building. Abby rests her hands on her hips as she waits for Lev to gather himself, already huffing and puffing again from running with a black t-shirt and jeans in the California heat. 

“Is this what we came for?” Lev asks, holding the collar of his shirt and fanning it out to cope with the unreasonably hot morning temperature. 

“Yup,” Abby answers, popping the p. 

“What is it?”

“That,” she points to the building proudly, “is a library.”

She watches Lev’s reaction, delighted to see him gasp and gawk at the building in an entirely new light than he was just a second ago. His eyes are wide as he looks it up and down, then he turns to Abby. “Really?” 

Abby smiles and pats his shoulder. “Happy birthday, kid.” 

“Can we go inside?” he asks excitedly.

“I hope so, or else I hauled ass finding this place for nothing,” Abby chuckles. “I— Hey!” She half-yells when Lev takes off running toward the automatic front doors that are sure to have lost their function. She never actually went in the building, it was too dark for that. The last thing she needs is for an Infected to pop out of nowhere and grab him. “Wait! Get back here!” 

She catches up, ready to voice her disapproval, but the way Lev is practically jumping for joy and clearly ansty as he tries to sneak a peek past the cloudy glass of the automatic doors makes her second-guess that. This is the first time Lev has been so unabashedly happy around her that wasn’t while they were ten million feet above ground in a high building or something. Abby realizes that Lev feels safe enough right now to act like a kid, because he is just a kid. It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking. 

So instead of scolding him, she says: “Didn’t realize I hyped up libraries for you that much.” She had told him about libraries toward the beginnings of their trip to California, after he had found a book in Oregon when they stopped there to get fuel. His eyes lit up at the idea of a place that’s filled with more and more books, given how much he loved the one he had found.

“What’s ‘ _hype up_?’” Lev asks quickly, far too concerned with everything else to sound like he cares that much whether he knows the answer or not. He searches for door handles, to no avail.

“That won’t work,” Abby comments, surveying the sets of multiple doors before her. “It’s another way to say excited, or eager. You know, giddy.”

Lev hums, standing back and looking up toward the upper floors of the library, probably trying to see if there’s another way in. “I don’t see any Demons in there,” he says, pointing up to the visible lounge a couple floors up. The walls are made up of tall windows, and it’s easy to notice that the room is completely empty.

“Yeah, but it’s a big building,” Abby warns. “And if they couldn’t get out through here, there could still be some stuck in there.” She finds a set of doors at the end that are slightly separated, just enough to get her hands through the gap. “Here we go. Lev,” she calls, motioning him over with a nod of her head. Once he’s ready, Abby slowly forces the doors apart, giving Lev the room to slip through. Then she wedges her way in, accommodating for her bulky backpack. She’s careful to bring the doors close together again before letting go completely. 

The shade is much more merciful than the direct sunlight, and Abby lets out a little sigh of relief at being out of the heat. She turns around to find that Lev already has his bow at the ready, nocking an arrow in preparation. Abby reaches for her pistol, checks the magazine before locking it into place, then leans toward Lev. 

“We’ll clear it floor by floor,” she whispers. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Lev whispers back. 

They carefully tread through the entrance, passing through sleek metal detectors that have long stopped working. There’s a large reception desk still lined with computers to their left, and around the corner toward their right, is the rest of the first floor. Rows and rows of books and big study tables occupying most of the space, not unlike the library back in Colorado. 

It doesn’t take very long for them to learn that there are definitely Infected in the premises.

Abby quietly ducks for cover behind the closest wall of bookshelves, Lev following nearby. She listens closely, straining her ears to guess at how many there are. She can make out about three or four Runners weeping and moaning nearby, and a Clicker somewhere farther away. She communicates with Lev using the hand gestures she taught him. When they make eye contact for a few seconds and nod in confirmation, they move, taking out the Infected one by one. As they sneak around the bookshelves and desks, Abby learns that she miscalculated just how many Runners were present. She counts six the moment she has eyes on them, and relays the information to Lev, who’s ducking behind a table a few feet away from her. He nods and takes out two of them, one after the other, with his bow and arrow. Abby gets three, snapping their necks, but has issues with the last one. It’s fresher, probably the most recent to turn, so his flesh hasn’t rotted enough to break as easily. 

“ _C’mon_ ,” she says through gritted teeth, twisting harder until the cervical vertebrae give way and the Runner’s neck finally snaps with a dull crunch. And not a moment too soon, because the Clicker had been making its way directly toward Abby during her struggle, and she couldn’t force the Runner to move away with her — its footsteps would be too loud. 

She hears the final Runner drop dead, presumably shot with an arrow, as she gently lowers the body to the ground and slowly stands up from her deep squat. The Clicker is still walking toward her, and she reaches for her pistol, aims it to its head, then pauses. It’s too risky to take the shot in a building as huge as this one. The Clicker is only a couple feet in front of her now, rearing its head back and raising its arms. Then blood shoots out from the side of its head where an arrow pierces it, right where its ear would be if it wasn’t covered by its flayed-out skull. The Clicker lands on the ground with a thud, twitching and clicking weakly as it dies.

“I think that’s all of them around here,” Abby whispers as Lev collects his arrows. “But the floor’s huge, keep an eye out.”

He nods in response, and Abby advances forward. They hide and sneak around another small group of Runners on the other end of the first floor. Abby, growing uncharacteristically restless, pulls out a shiv from her backpack to have as backup. It ends up being the right call, because as she turns the corner of a bookshelf, she bumps into the last Runner, hard enough to startle it. It lets out a yell.

“ _Shit_ ,” Abby hisses as she plunges the shiv right in the center of its throat, causing the Runner to lose most of its voice. It croaks and gasps, spluttering and choking on smelly blood, and tiny flecks of pink saliva fly from its lips onto Abby’s face. She yanks out the shiv, and a spurt of blood shoots out in its wake, some of it catching on Abby’s shirt. She pushes the Infected back with her left hand, holding it by its shoulder, and stabs it twice more in rapid succession, aiming for the carotids, then the forehead. The Infected makes a low gurgling sound as its trachea fills with blood, then it collapses.

She turns to Lev, her eyes wide with concern, adrenaline flooding her system in preparation for a horde to come dropping down the upper floors. They aren’t closed off like a usual building - the stairs are open, and it would be all too easy for the Infected to jump over the rails and land right where the two are waiting like sitting ducks.

“I think we’re good,” Lev murmurs after a few seconds of suspense. Abby looks up, listening for any agitated Infected, then relaxes when she hears nothing out of the ordinary. She nods once, wiping excess blood off of her face, then scans the area for the stairs. She finds them and pats Lev’s shoulder, pointing them out to him, and they head for the next floor. It’ll be a long process, but hopefully worth it.

About an hour or so later, they’ve cleared all the floors, and decide to take a seat in one of the common areas on the 3rd floor. The chairs are large and comfortable, and Abby can feel her body sinking into the recliner she’s chosen.

“This is a really big library,” she comments, slightly winded. “Colorado’s only had 4 floors…” 

“It’s different from what I imagined,” says Lev, equally as tired. “But I like it.”

“You do?” Abby perks up, a grin on her face. “That’s good. Go on, look around. I’ll catch up.” 

“Really?” says Lev, already standing again, his fatigue forgotten. 

“Yeah, go wild.” 

Lev doesn’t need to be told twice, it seems. With a giddy smile and the building cleared, he sets down his quiver and bow and races toward the first set of shelves he can find. 

“There’s so many of them,” he exclaims, causing Abby to chuckle. 

“What’d I tell ya? Libraries have tons of books.”

“I’ve never seen these words before!”

“Oh?” Abby calls, rolling her neck and relaxing further into her comfy chair. If only she could take this back to the boat. If only it would fit. “Like what?”  
She can hear Lev taking a moment to sound it out, and Abby wonders how the Seraphites taught the alphabet — if it was any different from the traditional way, or if that method was too ‘Old World.’ 

“As-true— tro…” Lev pronounces hesitantly. “Puh— Push?”

“Need help?”

“Wait,” says Lev. “That’s a _ff_ sound. Um… astrophysics?” 

“Hey, nice job!” Abby compliments, impressed he got it so quickly. “Big word for such a small kid.”

“Hey,” Lev protests, sounding a touch more offended than strictly necessary. “I’m not a small child anymore.”

“Are you really?” Abby jokes. “What are you, 11? 12?”

“13,” Lev answers.

“Hm,” Abby hums, moving to stand up. She leaves her backpack, only bringing her shiv and pistol only because they’re already in her pockets. “Still a kid. Not a little one,” she adds before Lev corrects her with how literally he takes everything. “But still a kid.” She makes her way to the general direction where she last heard Lev’s voice. “Find anything yet?”

“Nothing on sharks,” he replies, sounding a little disappointed. 

“Well, you just started,” Abby adds. She checks the guides on the sides of the bookshelves, and quickly notices a pattern. “I think this floor is all academic stuff. Things for the students. Probably won’t have shark stuff here. Let’s try a different floor.” 

“Okay,” Lev agrees. There’s the sound of a book closing, then footsteps that are steadily approaching.

They decided to go one floor down, grabbing their stuff beforehand. It has more books than the first and seems a lot more generalized than the floor above them. They set their stuff down again and Abby lets Lev run down the rows all the way to the other side to start looking around from there. Abby stays by the gear to snoop around and keep watch. She ends up reading a bit of an encyclopedia on airplanes, nodding and yeahing to Lev’s occasional comments of awe at the selection of this floor. There’s facts and history and pictures of planes — the book looks pretty good, only a bit worn and dirty. The spine isn’t very damaged, which makes Abby wonder what students decided to pick this one up in the past. 

As she reads, she remembers. 

_‘You mean people would ride those things?’ Abby gawked at her dad, then to the picture of the plane he set on her desk._

_‘Yup,’ he nodded. ‘30,000 feet in the air. The view from the windows were always so amazing! You’re so high up that trees look like the heads of ants.’_

_‘Shut up,’ said Abby, slamming her hand on the desk as a small wave of vertigo shook her._

_‘Oh you would have loved it, Abs!’_

_‘I said shut up! No I wouldn’t!’ Abby complained, heat building in her cheeks from fear and embarrassment. ‘Ugh, you’re so annoying!’_

_‘Don’t tell her about skydiving,’ Owen said snarkily from a few desks behind her._

_Abby’s eyes widened in sheer horror as she put the words together. ‘Sky...?’_

_‘Diving,’ her dad finished, exaggerating the delivery. ‘You get on a plane and then jump out of it.’_

_A deep chill racked through Abby’s body. ‘You’re lying,’ she said, standing up in challenge, then immediately feeling dizzy. ‘You’re actually lying to me right now.’_

_‘Am not.’_

_‘Are too.’_

_‘Am not.’_

_‘Are too!’_

Abby smiles as she closes the book and places it back on the shelf, ignoring the warming in her eyes. She remembers that day. She and Owen must have been around 12, wasting time in an empty classroom, and then her dad barged in to let her know dinner would be ready soon and to stop making out with Owen, even though they were literally five desks apart. She even told him that. Then he decided to stick around because apparently that was his job as a dad, to embarrass her in front of her friends like that.

Abby wipes the emerging tears from the brims of her eyes, the memory of Owen still an open wound, still a subject of her maddening guilt. _‘End it,’_ he had said to her that night in Jackson, unknowing that it would bring him his death. That Abby would be at fault. 

No, that _Ellie_ would be at fault. She killed Owen, and Mel—

—But she wouldn’t have if Abby had never… 

_It’s not the same thing, Abby,_ she tells herself, grinding her teeth. _They were innocent. Joel wasn’t. It’s Ellie’s fault that they’re gone._

_No_ , says another part of her, thinking back to when she listened to Ellie’s cries, begging her not to do it. _You knew exactly what you were creating that night. You should have known better than to let her live._

No, no, no. It’s all _Joel’s_ fault. He had to go and fuck over all of humanity just for that girl, the fucking stupid old man. He wasn’t even really her dad. What did _she_ know? How fucking dare she come after her as if Abby had killed someone who actually mattered to her? As if he wasn’t the scum of the earth for what he did? How could she be so selfish? How could she have ever been okay with that?

Abby gasps and blinks, coming back to herself, grunting in annoyance at having gotten worked up. She scrubs away at her tears with the back of her hand, sniffs, and scans the area for anything interesting that she could probably keep to pass the time. She ends up spotting something laying open on a side table, and her jaw drops in disbelief. She picks it up eagerly, slamming it shut to see the cover, and it is indeed a Merriam-Webster. 

“Hey, Lev!” She calls over her shoulder, opening the book again and skimming through its hundreds of pages. “I got something for you!”

She stops at a random page, toward the end of the book, and reads the first word her eyes land on.

**trep·i·da·tion**

That’s a new one for her. Sounds like something fancy Nora would have probably used. Did she ever make it to the attack on the island? Did she live through it…? 

“Lev!” Abby calls again, skimming through the rest of the page, then turning them backwards. She begins to walk toward the direction Lev went, trying to find her favorite word. “Lev, c’mere, I gotta show you this one.” 

It takes her slowly walking past four more bookshelves to realize she won’t get another response. She looks up, frowning, and strains her ears for the sound of footsteps, or clothes shuffling, or a book page being turned. 

“Lev?”

Realizing she might have missed him, she backs up, fully expecting to find him in one of the rows she walked past, ready to feel like an idiot. Then he’s not there, and Abby’s heart sinks to her toes. 

“Lev?” she says in a shaky, hushed voice, a cold sweat breaking down her neck. She takes off in a sprint. “Lev!” she yells, a fresh wave of panic boiling in her chest, snaking up her neck. Dread pools in her stomach. Her throat feels tight. “ _Lev_!” 

“Abby!?” Comes Lev’s worried voice from not too far away. 

Abby gasps so sharply she can feel her breath hitting the back of her throat. “Lev!? Where are you!? Stay where you are!”

“I-I’m here! Right over here!” 

Abby gauges his voice to be around three shelves in front of her and she books it. She finds him at a corner, staring at her like a deer in the headlights, his hands up in defense, one of them clutching an open book, and another white book by his feet, a blue silhouette of a shark on the cover.

“Oh, thank god,” Abby groans, relief flooding her system. It’s quickly replaced by anger as she approaches him. She kneels down to be close to his height, disappointment ridden all over her face. “Why weren’t you answering me? I thought something happened to you!”

“I’m sorry,” Lev says in a small, guilty voice. “I was— I was stuck reading… this.” He closes the book with both hands, bowing his head in shame and seeming to shrink in on himself. 

Abby sighs, most of her frustration seeping away right then and there. “Hey,” she says gently. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’m not mad, I was just... worried. You have to answer me when I call you. Especially when we’re separated.”

“I know, I know, I—” Lev turns away, his free hand grabbing his arm. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

“Hey,” Abby says lightheartedly, gently nudging his shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m not mad,” she repeats. She briefly leans in to give him a hug, a natural gesture, then freezes almost immediately, realizing she’s never actually hugged him before. Not even while he broke down a few weeks ago and cried for Yara. 

The moment passes. 

Abby stands up and takes a step back to give him some space, craning her neck and looking at the little corner he’s camped in. “So what did’ja find, huh?”

She immediately notices the small section of books, and that they’re different. The titles on their spines, the rainbow stickers specially marking them. What’s hardest to miss are the mini rainbow and trans flags hanging off the top shelves marking the beginning of the section. 

“Oh,” says Lev, shaking his head and opening up the book in his hands. “It’s nothing big,” he says, a weak attempt at shrugging off the significance of this section to him. No wonder he was too deep in his book to answer Abby. 

“What’s it about?” she finds herself saying before her brain can properly read the room, and presses her lips tightly together as instant regret floods her system. Shit, was she prying? At least Lev is straightforward and will give her the cold shoulder if she is, which is infinitely better than listening to a literal kid trudge through and answer a question they wish they didn’t have to answer. 

But Lev doesn’t do that. He doesn’t even seem bothered at all — in fact, he seems to get a little pep when he raises the opened book up for Abby to see the cover. “It’s about people like me,” he says happily. Then he lowers the book to his reading level. “I think.”

“It is,” Abby confirms after just one glance at the cover.

_Transgender 101: A Guide for Everyone. Written by trans people, for trans people._

There's an asterisk at the bottom that adds the words _And allies._

Abby isn’t sure if Lev knows these terms, that the Seraphites ever let those words come within a thousand feet of their island. It must have been the cover, with its various symbols going from one to another (or to a different one entirely) that tipped him off. Abby smiles warmly, all the more glad she helped Lev get something as valuable as this for his birthday.

“I didn’t think… there would be more people like me,” says Lev. “There was a part here where someone was saying how he felt.” He flips some of the pages, frowning at having lost his spot, but quickly shakes it off. “Said that it was normal, and good.” He smiles, his eyes glistening. “It made me happy,” he says, his voice a little strained with good tears. Abby smiles back.

“You should keep it,” she says warmly. 

“I want to,” says Lev, closing the book again. “I will,” he says with finality, his chin up.

“Awesome.” Abby holds up her hand for a high-five — another thing she recently taught Lev how to do. With only a split-second of hesitation, he completes the action, and then they’re both laughing. “Oh yeah,” says Abby, having forgotten the book she was carrying. She hands it over to Lev. “Got this one for you.”

He sets his own book down to take the one Abby is offering, eyeing the cover. “What is it about?”

“It’s a book full of words and what they mean. It’s called a dictionary.”

“Dictionary?” Lev repeats. “Why did you get me this?”

“So you’ll stop asking me what everything means all the time,” Abby teases, barely managing to resist the urge to nudge him for the upteenth time.

Lev pouts, and Abby gets second thoughts about her choice of words. “You hate it when I ask you questions...?”

“No,” she says, holding her hands out, worried. Fuck, way to go. “No, it’s not like that. I meant—”

Now he’s laughing at her.

Abby cocks her head to the side in confusion, her arms dropping. 

“Got you!” he says, pointing at her. “I was ‘messing’ with you there.” He giggles some more as Abby’s dropped jaw can’t decide if it wants to stay that way or smile, so it settles for an awkward mix between the two. She crosses her arms. 

“Young man,” she says. “Did you just make a joke?”

“Uh,” says Lev, a little uncertain. “Yes?”

Abby nods in approval, trying to ignore the tightening in her chest from being so damn proud. “Well done.” She sniffs. “C’mon, let’s put these away and look for any more you want. You’ll have to show me that one later,” she adds, gesturing toward the shark book he managed to pick up.

“Okay,” says Lev, tucking his books under both his arms, and flipping through the dictionary with his hands. They start their walk down the long isle between bookshelves back to the spot where they set their gear by the stairs. “How do I know where to find the words?”

“It’s in alphabetical order,” Abby answers, taking off her rubber band and carding her fingers through her hair to undo the lower portions of her braid. 

“What does that mean?”

“The beginning pages start with the words that begin with A, then B, then C, and the rest of the way so on.” She opts for the quicker 3-strand plait, rather than her standard fishtail. 

“I still don’t understand.”

Abby half-turns around, eyes wide. “They never taught you the—!?” She shuts her eyes and groans. “Do you know what letter the word starts with?”

“Yes,” says Lev, skimming through the small, thin pages. “The words are really tiny in this book.”

“It’s a tiny book. Keep flipping the pages until all the words start with that letter,” Abby instructs, finishing up the braid and tying it off. “Then look around from there.” 

After a few more moments of walking and the sound of pages furiously being flipped, Lev finally speaks up again just as they arrive to their gear. 

“You were wrong,” he says.

Abby frowns and scoffs as she unzips her backpack, putting away the bloodied shiv. Then she realizes she never wiped her hand and now it’s covered in dried human-fungal blood. She turns up her nose and wipes it against the fabric of the seat as best she can. 

“Wrong about what?” she inquires.

“Hype,” says Lev.

“Hype?” 

“It says that hype means ‘to promote or publicize extravagantly.’” 

“Yeah?” says Abby, turning around to Lev’s face practically buried in the book. “So?”

“That’s not what you said it meant earlier.”

“Well, okay, but—” Abby, rising to the challenge, hooks her fingers over the top of the book to bring it down and level with the floor, the pages facing up to the ceiling between her and Lev. She searches with her index finger, trying to find the word upside down, then eventually locates and points to it. “Look, it has different meanings, doesn’t it?”

Lev looks down to the list of definitions beneath the first one listed. “Yes, but why are they still different from what you said?”

“It doesn’t have—? Okay,” says Abby, trying to figure out how she’ll explain this one. “What you have is just the dictionary definition.”

“Dictionary definition?” Lev repeats. 

“Yeah, sometimes people use words differently than what the dictionary definition is.”

“Why?” 

Abby shrugs. “I don’t know. But hey, that’s—”

A red dot appears on the page. Both Abby and Lev freeze, their eyes trained on the shape that definitely wasn’t there just now. Then another, smaller dot appears nearby it. Then another.

Then another. 

Abby and Lev slowly look up, their eyes meeting. Abby can only assume she’s mirroring the look of stark terror that Lev has. Then she braves it and looks up toward the ceiling. 

A Stalker is sitting on the rails of the stairs above them. It jumps down before Abby has time to finish yelling.

It lands on her, causing her to fall down first onto her knees. A searing, burning pain shooting up her bones, from her knees all the way up her thighs and to the hips. Then she’s falling forward, unable to bear the infected’s weight, and then her wrists receive the same treatment as her knees in her attempts to break the fall. 

“—Oh, shit!”

“—Abby!?”

Between the weight of the Infected on her back and her limited sight due to her head being forced to look down, she barely notices when Lev kicks it off of her, giving her just enough time to scramble up to her feet.

“C’mon!” Lev shouts, running, snatching his bow and quiver from the seat he had put them on earlier.

Abby makes it two steps before the Stalker grabs one of her ankles. She’s falling right back down again, onto her face. Out of some instinct to not bite her tongue off, she retract it into her mouth before her chin crashes onto the floor; her teeth make a loud clack as they collide. It should have been more painful than that, but the adrenaline is kicking in again, and she barely feels anything beside the death grip the Infected has on her ankle.

“Ahh! Fuck!” She quickly spins around onto her back. “Lev!” she calls as she kicks its head in with her other foot, preventing it from getting a bite on her leg. 

There’s a sound of surprise from behind her, and another Infected, then Lev falling, then his bow and a singular arrow hitting the floor. “Abby!” he cries. “Abby, help!” His voice gets quieter as he goes on, like he’s being dragged off somewhere else. “Ab—!”

“Lev!?” Abby kicks the Infected again, square in the face, stunning it long enough to bring her ankle down on one of its wrists, hard enough that even she feels it in her own shin, and it breaks, releasing its hold on her. She quickly spares a glance behind her, and her eyebrows rise to her forehead when she sees that Lev is being dragged by the ankle farther down the aisle. Since when did these fuckers learn how to do that!? “Lev, no!” She finally kicks the Infected off of her foot and makes it back onto her feet. “Fucking Stalkers!” she barks as she kicks its head into the floor. It takes two tries, but she manages to kill it, the heel of her dominant leg smashing and smearing its brains into the floor with a wet crunch. 

She can hear the struggle behind her. 

“Goddammit!” Abby yells when she doesn’t feel her pistol in her pocket, then realizes it’s on the floor in front of her, on the edge of the pool of blood that’s pouring out of the Stalker’s head. “Hang on, Lev! I’m coming!” 

“Hurry!” 

She whips her head over her shoulder at the same time that she reaches for her pistol, just in time to see Lev kick off the infected and roll away, then reach for his quill despite missing his bow. Then the gun slips, jumping right out of her grip and clambering back onto the floor. Abby curses loudly to herself and gets a grip on it with both hands to accommodate the slipperiness. Then she scrambles to her feet and books it, Lev just a short sprint away. 

Now it has him in a standing struggle, and, by the looks of things, Lev isn’t winning. But she has a clear shot.

“Hold on!” Abby shouts, already aiming for the Stalker’s head—

Another one lunges at her from her left, knocking her into the nearest shelf. 

“Oh fuck! Shit shit shit!” Abby hisses, forcing away one of the Infected’s arms with one hand and pushing back at its forehead with the other. It’s mouth is inches from her nose, rancid hot breath puffing all over her face as it gnashes its teeth, biting down loudly.

“Abby!” Lev calls, more desperate than before. “I can’t hold it!”

“Motherfucker!” Abby screams as she frees one of her hand and uses it to land a hook right under the Infected’s jaw. With the small window she bought herself, Abby jams the barrel of the gun into its throat and shoots twice. The Stalker’s head explodes, blood and fungus flying in the air like a petty firework, and Abby shoves the thing off and away from her. 

She turns her attention to Lev, and shoots the attacking Infected once in the body to surprise it, which gives Lev enough time to shove it away to where it doesn’t have a full hold on his body anymore. With a yell, Abby throws a punch to its head, putting her whole body into it, and it flies away, landing a few feet back. It’s so dazed that it can’t get its limbs to coordinate. It’s arms try to do something different than its legs, and it collapses after trying to crawl away. Abby, deciding to save the bullets, settles with kicking its head in. 

“Is that all of them?” she groans, her shoulders slumping. She looks down to her messy boot and kicks off the excess blood, fungus, and a few teeth that were still stuck on.

“I think so...” 

Abby listens out, extra careful this time, for the pitter-patter of any more Stalkers crawling about. After a minute or so, when she’s satisfied, she sighs and turns her attention to Lev. 

“Are you okay? No bites?”

“I’m fine,” he says, showing his arms and hands. He’s still holding a single arrow, the head of it stained dark red. He must have used it to fight off the Infected when it got too close. If he didn’t have that, he’d probably be bitten or dead right now, on his birthday, under Abby’s watch. Guilt settles in, and Abby swallows down the lump in her throat. After everything, everything they went through, only for him to almost die because she let him out of her sight for just a little too long. 

Never again.

“We should go,” says Abby. “In case any more come. Gunshots.” 

“Hey,” says Lev, stepping in front of her before she can take off and make him follow. Abby looks down at him, confused by the worry in his eyes. “Are you okay?”

“What?” Abby asks, her voice thin. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. No bites. Let’s go.”

They decide to pick up their things and head back to the boat, since they don’t technically have to be at the airport for another two days. When they finally settle back, it’s probably close to late afternoon. They eat lunch and relax for a while. Soon enough, the sun is beginning to set. Abby checks their fuel supplies and other necessities. When that’s done, she decides she can go for a little nap. She finds Lev inside the boat instead of sitting on the deck like usual, reading his book about sharks.

“How is it?” she asks. 

“I like it,” Lev answers. “It’s good. Can we go back and get more?”

“Uh, sure,” Abby shrugs. “We’ll be out in this area for a few days anyway. We can set aside another day for you to get your fill.” She shuts the doors above her and takes a seat on the steps. “So,” she begins. “How’s that for a birthday?”

“What?” Lev asks, putting his book down.

“Did you have fun?”

“Well, yes, mostly.” 

Abby chuckles. “Yeah, almost dying is never fun. But it was something nice, was it?” she asks hopefully. 

“It’s much better than what was supposed to happen today,” Lev says. _Oh,_ Abby thinks. _Right. Forgot about that._ “But I’m glad we went,” he adds, a soft smile on his face. “Thank you, Abby.” 

She smiles back, feeling accomplished. “No problem, kid.”

**Author's Note:**

> While I undoubtedly love Lev as a character, I have intense mixed feelings on Abby, so with this prompt I challenged myself to write this in her point of view. Great brain exercise. I think I'm just going to have to use her more in the future to expand my horizons. Plus, while I was playing as her, I grew attached to the companionship she's formed with Lev. It was only a matter of time before I wrote about it. I know not much is happening here. It kinda feels like it would be a filler chapter for a bigger project, but maybe that's just me. I may or may not do a follow-up work - it depends on how far this other idea I have goes in my drafts.
> 
> But first I'll be getting back to following up on Something Worth Salvaging. I was originally writing a single follow-up fic and ended up splitting it into two with the way it dragged on and on. Hoping to get those done soonish.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Kudos, comments, all that jazz, are always welcome and appreciated ^_^


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